


The Distant Ages

by welcometolotr



Series: The Distant Ages [1]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Braids, Doriath, Eregion, F/M, Family, First Age, Gen, Hair, Insanity, Kinslayings, Loss, Regret, Rivendell, Second Age, Third Age, Valinor, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-26
Updated: 2013-08-07
Packaged: 2017-12-13 00:30:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 3,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/817838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/welcometolotr/pseuds/welcometolotr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Character studies and headcanons: On Nerdanel's special brand of insanity, Celebrimbor straining against his fate, the best of Fingon's braids, and more.</p><p>Ongoing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Nerdanel

**Author's Note:**

> Nerdanel has not known sanity for a long, long time.

_**some nights I wish my hands could build a castle**  
 **some nights I wish they'd just fall off**  
_ _(Some Nights, bastardized, by Fun.)_

 

 

_-x-_

There's a trail of statues decorating the path to my house.

Some are beautiful and some are grotesque, but they are all mine. They reflect what I feel inside on any given day, and I use them to gauge exactly how much I feel like fading out of existence. _It's hard to tell, sometimes._

Most of the beautiful ones – the elleths and ellons with graceful hands and slender limbs, the vases with lifelike blooms and the fountains frozen forever – they are my memories. They are the ages long past during which I truly lived, before my life was ripped from me and my family was Doomed.

I live alone.

No one comes to visit me regularly, and on the blue moon that Arafinwe comes by he simply watches as I go about my work. The wrought-mithril tea set my husband made me many anniversaries ago sits in the cupboard with the tea it is supposed to bear, coated in many yeni of dust. I think I last got it out when Ingwion came to visit, after the War of Wrath.

This was once a summer home for a great family, filled on and off with laughter and merriment. They delighted in the lives they lead and gathered here every year to share in their joy. They crafted, built, played, and relaxed.

They were my husband and sons, and they are all dead.

I am working on a particularly complicated design today. It is filled with gnashing teeth and burning flames and claws full of rent flesh and will look like what my dreams are filled with, the fates of my sons. The hound I carved yesterday – or was it yesteryear? - was for my husband, the indomitable flame, and was tortured to its brink, crispy and flayed. I think I did very well on it.

Namo comes to visit every year, on what I think must be the day of the Oath. He asks if I want to know the fates of those that used to share this home with me, and I wonder why he asks. I don't need him to tell me that they were ended in fire and ash and blood. I don't need the omniscient being that spoke their Doom to inform me that it came true.

My father does not visit.

I used to show him my creations, but he did not understand my inspiration nor my reasons and left. He lives near Aule now, my mother close at hand, crafting and crafting and trying to ignore what I already know – his precious grandchildren are all gone, never to return and beg Anatar Mahtan for trinkets again. Never to bend down a bit – a lot, in Russandol's case – and hug Amille, or to trip over my little Ambarussa-

There's a trail of statues decorating the path to my house.

-x-


	2. Feanor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Feanor will never kneel.

_**do unto others as they have done to you,**   
**but what the hell is this world coming to?** _

and

_**that's why I fight fire with fire  
oh I'm burning inside and my heart is a-cryin** _

_(Fight Fire with Fire by Metallica and Fight Fire with Fire by Kansas, respectively.)_

_-x-_

We were not made to kneel.

If the gods made us to be their children forever, truly wanted us to be protected and obey them as parents and guiding forces, then they should have gone with the part and _protected_ us. Actually _acted_ as parents, as I do to my sons when I protect and cherish them. I asked nothing from them but love. And what do these gods ask of me? My very soul, split in three, delights to all the realms.

I will not kneel to these self-entitled beings. Their justice is none at all, and were I to enter the M _á_ hanaxar with my jewels I would be torn apart. Eru alone I can trust, for if he had intended for the gods to receive my creations then I would already have given them away in fated events. Eru leads my life as he has lead my father before me. Finw _ë_ gave me this trust and I am not the Spirit of Fire for nothing. I will hold strong and true in the face of this farce and Yavanna shall simply have to be content with finding another way to recreate her Lights. Daily I attempt to invent items of great value that would fill yawning gaps in our culture and way of life, and daily do I experience failure. I forge ahead, though, and I do see success in its grandest forms, an experience that would have been all the more flat without the previous failures. But when Yavanna is greeted with failure? - to protect, to cultivate, to save, to even convince what should by all rights be one of her own children to part with a piece of something that could save her work - she collapses. She tries to persuade others to fix what she has not even attempted to correct and metes out twisted justice on me for trying to protect my own creations.

Is it so wrong for me to have created some glorious object and then to have defended it from those who would seek to take it as their own?

I always regarded my greatest work as my children, but after some time they were not my children any longer and I needed to create another life, another dependent being. A child that would _stay_ a child, something to lavish love and luxury on, beautiful as I am and more so than any other inanimate object I had ever crafted. Each of my seven sons hold a small piece of my soul, and I rounded this shining collection out to include my three precious gems. Yet still do I keep my sons closer to my heart than anything else I have made.

" _My love, you've fallen asleep over your work again."_

I have, haven't I. My apologies, wife, but I must find a way to defend myself from the gods. They want to steal parts of my own being and never give them back.

Eru forbid I ever fall to kneel before them.

-x-


	3. Maedhros

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maedhros contemplates strength.

_**there's power in the blood, power in the blood  
would you over evil a victory win?** _

_(There's Power in the Blood by Lewis Jones)_

_-x-_

I tower above them all in what they think is superiority and power, absolute command of armies and strategies. They believe me to be a leader equal to Morgoth's generals, one that surpasses even his cousin and uncle in strength due to having survived the tortures of Angband. They think I have an intimate understanding of the enemy and how he works.

I don't.

What I have is an intimate understanding of how little it takes for me to break. My own limits and weaknesses, and my strength in turn.

I hail from strength. A line of supreme authority that never paused to consider whether or not its actions were the right ones, and I have tried my best to become my _own_ , separate from that legacy.

It's impossible. When my men look at me, they see the spearhead fronting our offensive (and defensive, sometimes) and gain their courage. When the enemy sees me, they notice only another in a long line of worthy adversaries, though perhaps one a little brighter and taller than those who came before. When my allies see bright red hair and glittering armor, they are heartened against the black foes we fight, but simultaneously they feel their stomachs drop and they taste hate and terror on their tongues, wishing only to cover my body in crimson.

My strength is not meant to lead absolutely. My strength is meant to _support_ true power. If I lead, I would twist and crumble and follow only the insanity that has lead my father and brothers. And though I try my best to stay my own, I know that one day I will succumb, and it is best for all if at that time I am not that spearhead.

Absolute power is my uncle's to claim. Nolofinwe has not been and cannot be corrupted. If he falls, it will be with the strength and pride that I do not and cannot possess. He does not know how little it would take to break, and this makes him stronger. He possesses the confidence that power takes in hand to become perfect authority, and only knowing this will I offer it to him.

I love my family too much to betray them. My strength lies in loyalty and my power in my blood, and neither are beneficial to winning this war. Even Nolofinwe, with all his intelligence and authority, is of my family and will not be able to win. He, however, will go down a martyr. I foresee myself going down a selfish brute, loyal to no one because those I am loyal to will all be gone.

I will be the last of the Feanorians, and I will hate myself, my blood, and my power with all that I have.

I only hope that the rest of my blood will have found peace and an escape long before the darkness comes to claim me.

I know where I fall on the scale of power – where I should live, where I will die, and why I am feared.

 _That_ is true strength.

_-x-_


	4. Celebrimbor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Celebrimbor accepts the inevitable.

_**they say you were created to do great things** _

_(Legacy by Memphis May Fire)_

_-x-_

If someone had approached me a thousand years ago without cringing or stiffening, without fear or judgment in their eyes – I'm not sure what I would have done. I might have stood stock-still, I might have feared for my life. I might have broken down in tears. I certainly would never have expected such treatment.

I was in the background from the time I was born – just another Feanorian, another in a long line of possible heirs to an insane throne. The only unique element of my existence is that I had no cousins. Finwe's line takes the form of tiers of multiple children – my great-grandfather had five, my grandfather seven, three of the five had multiple offspring, but only one of those seven had any children. In the eyes of the masses, I was the sole heir to a legacy of madness.

I can have no children. This line will die with me – my uncles knew this, and had intended themselves to be the end of my grandfather's blood. I am the result of the single disagreeing factor – Curufin, my father. He was the mirror image to my grandfather and certainly the most lunatic of his surviving sons. Not in erratic behavior; on the contrary, he was quiet, charismatic, and cunning – not entirely unlike Caranthir, but for the length and breadth of is madness. He simply did not know where to stop. He was loyal to a fault to our family, and knew that we needed to carry on for ages immeasurable, and I am that product. He didn't realize what a disservice he was doing to the world – or if he did, he chose to ignore it.

The nobler, _saner_ lines of the Noldor will be carried on as they should be, by Galadriel and Turgon. They may not be the purest or most innocent, but the lines of Fingolfin and Finarfin are untainted by the madness that corrupts Feanor's own.

The inhabitants of my fair city bow to me, smile at me, and greet me. They hold me as a good leader, one that would give up his life for them. Maybe they think that I am trying to make up for the horrors perpetrated by the rest of my family. They might even be under the impression that nothing worse can be done to them by their own kind, I do not know. The only reason I stay here is to use them. They are my alert system.

The second they begin reacting weirdly – to something I say, something I do – when they begin behaving with fright or awe – I will _know_ that I have finally followed my father into his lunacy, into his dark world where there is no right or wrong, only power and loyalty. A never-ending fight to the end of the Arda.

This is where I am right, and he was wrong. _I_ will not inflict that upon the world. I will go to my death as soon as I feel as if I am living in a time a thousand years past, when people look upon me with fear or judgment.

I will singlehandedly end the insanity that I was born into.

-x-


	5. Erestor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erestor ponders his place.

**_some wish to be a king or a queen_ **   
**_some wish for fortune and fame_ **   
**_but to be truly, truly, truly loved_ **   
**_well, that's more than any one of those things_ **   
_(To Be Loved by Michael Buble)_

_-x-_

I bear obvious signs of Ñoldorin blood, and that is all most see in me. The haunting, black-swathed shape of Elrond's chief counselor - is he a remnant of Eregion? Gondolin? Lindon? Is he Avarin? I ignore them. Those closest to my heart - my lord and his family, Glorfindel, Lindir - they know who I am and where I hail from, and that is enough. It is the rumors of vampirism and blood relation to Thuringwethil from sour elements that endlessly amuse me, and drunken words connecting me to Fëanor and his sons sometimes even trigger a smirk. They do not know how close they are.

_"Erestor, perhaps if you clothed yourself in lighter colors and actually approached sunlit halls, visitors would not faint of fright. Perhaps if you laughed more freely, you would receive more smiles and generosity. I do not undervalue the respect you command, but relationships aren't built solely on such things. Awe and love, yes. Fear and rumors, no. You are imposing! "_

_"Glorfindel, it is_ your _job to be loved, Elrond's to be respected, and mine to be paid attention to. Nothing more, nothing less, and if I hear another word out of you about it I'll wallop you with your own journal!"_

_His golden friend only stared sadly, as if Erestor was missing out on something very important._

_"Truly, I understand what you are saying. But please, Glorfindel. I have all the love and respect I need right here," he strode closer and tapped his friend's chest, "from you. Stay as you are, and that alone will be more than I require."_

I have lived in Rivendell since its foundation, by the side of Elrond and his family. Lurking, as some would have it, but I simply go where I am needed, whether that be at desks in dim offices or the backs of great lords of elves and men. My role contents me, and I know that my actions influence many without seeming to. I have importance in this valley and culture, far more so than ever before. I have true friends, people that support me and ask only what I can give, not what their legends write me capable of.

" _My friend, once again you have been a pillar of support. I know that I have not been very helpful to you in recent times, and I must thank you for keeping Imladris whole and hale in my- depression."_

_Erestor started. "Elrond! I would never presume to force you to keep working, with the condition that you were in. You needed time and rest, not the problems and responsibilities of a ruler. Do not thank me for doing my job!"_

_His lord sighed and moved a braid over his shoulder, leaning on the oaken desk for support. "Erestor, what you consider your job, most would consider to have taken over their life. Do my worrywart conscience a favor and go have a picnic with Glorfindel, would you? I am fully recovered and more than capable of dealing with anything that arises today. You, on the other hand, have been doing the work of two for a period of months and have bags under your eyes so large that even a Man would notice. Go rest. Relax. Enjoy yourself. Relearn how to_ not _work – Glorfindel's quite good at that, I'm sure he'll give you a hand." He looked up and smiled. "I don't want to see you in this office for at least three days, more if you can stand it. No records, no archiving, no meetings, no inventory. Take a well-deserved and long-coming break." Raising a hand, he made a shooing motion and waited expectantly for his advisor to exit._

I think that I am loved, and by the people whose opinions mean the most to me. Is that not what Laurë meant, once upon a time? Is that what he wanted me to understand?

-x-


	6. Galadriel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Galadriel's hands are stained.

 

**_we will fight to the death  
to the edge of the earth_ **

_(This is War by 30 Seconds to Mars)  
_

_-x-_

With every swing of her sword, every flash of her blade, she was protecting something. With every severed limb and every last second of life flashing through their eyes, she was making good on his promises. Wading through gore and fire and ash had become the normal, and it seemed as if each day brought more of the same. This was not true, of course; she could distinctly remember days of rest, of medical attention, of fierce councils and fiery eyes, but swiftly following each would be more battles, more fighting, and more death. And with the proliferation of those blood-soaked days, it was getting harder and harder for her to distinguish elf from man from orc. Her mind knew that the forms she was chopping down were twisted and black, but her eyes saw her Telerin kin, and her ears heard the screams of their children.

She was ambitious and driven, fierce in all the ways of her cousins. She may have once denied her uncle a strand of hair, but when it came down to it she followed him and his forces through hell, and as such, straight to it.

It was a blessed relief when she made her home in Doriath for a time, courted by Celeborn and admired by many. Outwardly she flourished, holding counsel with Melian and singing with Luthien, but deep inside she stagnated, mind swirling with the colors of blood and mire, knowing that the great forest with its easy peace was not her place.

And through the long years, no matter where she travelled, no matter where she ruled, she was not content. In Lorien, she thought she might at last have found comfort and beauty, and her people nigh on worshipped her as magnificent, as the most magical being there was and could ever be.

She knew better, though.  
  
Galadriel knew that her subordinates saw her as immovable. Wise. Fair beyond comprehension, with the power to see beyond time itself. Her kind, wonderful husband thought the same, she realized, and it was then that she knew that Lorien could never truly be her home. If they saw her as such, then she must have been acting the part perfectly – her ferocity had not waned, it was simply hidden. They expected her to sit at councils and offer sage advice, when she knew that her place was on the battlefield, splitting helms and gashing bodies, just like the rest of the forces she had once been part of, long ago. She could not deny this part of her soul any more than she could deny her bond to Celeborn.

And so she strapped on gauntlets and pulled over her head the finest mail shirts while her handmaidens twittered in the background, hands darting out nervously and voices rising in worry. Ignoring them was no hardship, and by the time her armor was in place and her hair braided up, her husband was ready with his own. They would ride out together as they had never done before, for where the one went so did the other, and they would make this battle one to remember.  
  
She saw silver hair and fearful faces all around her on the plain, and it was difficult to recall that they were not the ones she was fighting to kill on this day.

 

-x-


	7. Fingon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fingon hides things in plain sight.

****

**_I just wanna be myself  
and I want you to know, I am my hair_ **

_(Hair by Lady Gaga)_

_-x-_

 

His hair was an ever-changing work of art.

 

As a child, it had been too short to style, and so it went unbound until his mother was finally able to put in a small ponytail.

 

As a youth, he wavered between the braids of a squire and those of a student, grimacing when his sister teased him about his future choice.

 

After his majority, his path was simply that of a prince, and so were his plaits.

 

With the death of his father years later he began to wear the interweaved and overly decorative king-braids, and no matter how long his hair was, he always made sure that it was pristine.

  
And from the moment that he met his cousin Maitimo, there were two little lover’s braids tucked behind the rest.

 

-x-


	8. Celegorm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Celegorm may be old and tired and just a little bit dead, but he still has hopes and dreams.

Celegorm was tired. Haggard, hungry, and exhausted, he wanted nothing more than for this to end. He missed his brothers, his cousins, and even his uncles. He wanted to run with Huan, to wander the forests with Oromë, and to hug his mother again. He wanted to slap his father clean across the face for dying so soon into their quest, and then slap him again for not telling them something nice as his last words. He wanted to muss up Ambarussa’s hair and de-string all of Maglor’s harps; he wanted to spirit away Curvo’s tools in the dead of night like a sock fairy and clean them for the morning. He wished he could hold a hand up to measure the distance between his and Maedhros’ heights, and he wanted to sit down with Moryo at his grumpiest and cuddle him for a while. He thought of Irissë often and wished he could make her laugh just one more time.

He could go anywhere he wanted, but only as far as the gates of the Thousand Caves; he could not leave. Oh, he had tried, but something inside him was keeping him there, with the bones of his dearest brother and those of his last enemies.

He wondered if anyone was still proud of him now, now that he had done so much for so many. Now that he had gifted death and life and lied and saved and given and took and maybe just once, had told the truth and loved. He played with the idea that his mother was still waiting for him, somewhere, and that perhaps Maglor and Maedhros would eventually find him.

The caves were silent and dark, but he knew his way around. He had been moving through halls and around balconies and into cellars for an Age now, no one and nothing stopping him.

He idly watched his hair drift in in the dark water and wondered that if the moon could shine through the rock and stone and bones of Menegroth, if its light could reach through the thousands of feet of water overhead – would the strands still gleam? 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ghost/Fea!Celegorm, doomed to wander through flooded Menegroth until the end of time.


End file.
